DFI 662-TMG/G motherboard review-The Conroe supported SIS integrated budge solution

[windwithme]

After the official release of Intel Conroe CPU in the end of July,
most of Conroe supported M/Bs are equipped with Intel 965/975 chipsets,
price range from 130 ~ 300 US dollars, depends on its market segment.







Although in general speaking, Intel chipsets have sound performance.
Before the Intel 945 chipset will be released and supported Conroe CPU,
This DFI 662-TMG/G comes with SIS 662 chipset and 85 U.S. dollars of the
competitive price will certainly draw some attention in the retail market.











Product package
Not DFI Infinity or LanParty middle to higher range of product line.
It is a general entry level product.














Unambitious motherboard accessories and cables.

















Motherboard appearance
All in one integrated product















The lower right hand corner:
SIS Mirage™ 1 graphics core,
there is a PCI-E X16 slot and two PCI slots for expansion cards.















The lower left hand corner:
South bridge is SIS 966, built-in with four SATA ports
and integrated with RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD functions.
Just a pity this M/B does not support SATA II, but is still equipped with two
IDE channels.















The upper right hand corner
Two single channel DRAM slots, support DDRII 533/667















CPU surrounded area:
3-phase PWM power design
with good quality Solid Aluminum electrolytic capacitors.
















I/O components
Realtek ALC655 6 channels audio chip
SIS 196 Gigabit network controller














Test environment
CPU:INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800
MB: DFI 662-TMG/G
DRAM:Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3
VGA:ELSA 6800Ultra or SIS Mirage™ 1
HD:Seagate 7200.7 80GB
POWER:AcBel 550W
Cooler:Tower112










The test in this review was conducted with Intel highest range Conroe X6800
CPU, people asked the reason to use such high-end CPU, our reasons are:
1.Currently we do not have extra budget to purchase an extra middle to
lower range CPU for the review of low budget M/Bs, and this CPU is the only
one came across at the time of our review.

2.This review was done with this Conroe highest range X6800 CPU also
proved this SIS 662 entry level M/B is capable of using Conroe high
performance CPU.



system setting
CPU 266X11=>2.93G
DRAM DDRII 667 1GBX1

Everest

CPU Queen













CPU ZLib














FPU Julia












Basic performance:
The CPU performance does not drop much on this all in one M/B.

DFI 662-TMG/G

Strength:
1. Low price “Conroe supported” M/B.
2. One PCI-E 16X expansion slot
3. The temperature on Southbridge and Northbridge keep in very acceptable
range during system operation.



Weakness:
1. does not support SATA II
2. There is still plenty of room for the improvement on BIOS Overclock setting.
3. No DVI connector





Front Side Bus could reach 266Mhz stable, with Pentium D 805/PD915 and other Pentium 4 products.
It will be a very economic PC solution to fit with Intel E4300 CPU for general
usage in the future.


The CPU frequency and built-in VGA performance will be on the next review…

[windwithme]

DFI 662-TMG/G BIOS Introduction

Frequency/Voltage Control page















CPU clock setting range 266~533Mhz



















DRAM frequency ratio























CPU VID Offset setting
0.025~0.375V



















DDRII Voltage range
1.8~2.5V

















Chip Set Voltage setting















DRAM Clock/Timing Control















Test Environment
CPU:INTEL Core 2 Extreme X6800
MB: DFI 662-TMG/G
DRAM:Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3
VGA:ELSA 6800Ultra
HD:Seagate 7200.7 80GB
POWER:AcBel 550W
Cooler:Tower112














Note: The SIS Mirage™ 1 graphics core we mentioned in last review is
actually an old chipset, and only support up to DX8 and comes with ordinary
graphical display quality.





Test this M/B with 6800Ultra graphics card
CPU/VGA/DRAM all set to default

3DMARK2003




















3DMARK2005

























Data transmission went smoothly during the test of high speed SD memory
card













X6800 OC 300X11=>3300Mhz
SIS chipset could also reach FSB 300 stable?

















DFI 662-TMG/G

Strength:
1. Under 85 U.S. dollars Conroe supported M/B
2. One PCI-E 16X for expansion card
3. Two IDE ATA133 channels
4. The heat generation is very acceptable for Northbridge during normal
system operation.
5. The Voltage/Frequency setting is considered as feature rich for All in one
M/B products.
6. Front Side Bus could reach 300Mhz stable.
7. Well performed on USB high speed data transmission.





Weakness:
1. does not support SATA II
2. No DVI
3. The temperature of Southbridge is slightly higher, suggest to add a heat
sink for better heat absorption.
4. The VGA performance is just enough for daily usage.
5. No dual channel for memory.









After the post of first review, some people think the price is slightly too high,
perhaps it is because the price of SIS 661 M/B was just about 50~60 US
dollars. SIS 662 is a whole new product, even though the improvement is not
so large, it is still quite normal to have higher price in this IT industry.



As we said previously,
it will be a very economic PC solution to fit with Intel E4300 CPU or Pentium D
805/PD915, plus add-on graphics card, this solution will offer outstanding
performance.






Obviously there are still so many improvements SIS could do to refine this
product, and as far as we concern, focus on All-in-one market segment will
not be a cure for its long term survival.

[Shaotai]

thanks for the review...

Might be a good board for a average joe user. I might be using a lot of these for customer builds...

[reg_pfj]

thanks wwm

[kais]

neat, is 300 the max fsb

[ewitte]

Somehow I doubt many of these boards will see a X6800

[DaWaN]

Is 300mhz already the max

[PoZiTroN]

Soon I'll also try this board. Our price is $68

[FLMJIGGY]

Nice review. Thanks WWM!!! Looking decent so far!

What is max FSB?

[Lestat]

oh yeah i think i just found my mATX board if the sis chipset can handle a higher FSB
and the bios shots do clearly show 266 to 533 so technically it does have a fsb limit of 533.

nice little board, i would say 80 is too much. but then again y DFI RS482 still goes for more than that and its 939 ATI 200 chipset.. (but then again its the best)

[jcmarfilph]

@windwithme:

Is 300 the max stable FSB?

Can you try lower multi like x7 or x8 or x9 then find the max FSB stable?

I am thinking of replacing my ASRockTwins with this one...

thanks!

[windwithme]

@windwithme:

Is 300 the max stable FSB?

Can you try lower multi like x7 or x8 or x9 then find the max FSB stable?

I am thinking of replacing my ASRockTwins with this one...

thanks!

Its SIS...
The maximum is 300FSB